


PS The University and Diversity of Nevada 


By? RURUS STEELE. 


(Reprint of an article published in the Sunset Magazine for May, 1914) 


= 





|. 











eS CA 09S hfe 


YAeHe 





| The statue of John W. Mackay in front of the Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada 


. 


: 





The Great American Desert—thrilling feature of the school geography 
came to mean Nevada more than anything else-—is being sponged off the map of these United States with 


half a generation ago and which finally 


water and gasoline. Horace Greeley, after his wild ride with Hank Monk in 1859, always spoke of it as the 
awlul desert. But “‘awful’’ meant nothing worse than dryness and remoteness. The water of irrigation 
projects is eliminating the dryness and the gasoline of the automobile has conquered distance 


The UNIVERSITY 222, DIVERSITY 


PALOMINO stallion with 

arching neck and muscle- 

ridged barrel led the 

dozen brown and mottled 

mares of his seraglio up a 

silent hillside with that 
eternal vigilance which, among horses as 
among men, is the price of liberty. The 
hoofs of the daintily-stepping herd left 
hardly a mark even where the gritty soil 
was free of the sage. At the summit of the 
ridge the horses became so many Borglum 
statues while gazing down into the valley 
of the Truckee. The stallion had halted 
them when his eye picked out a group of the 
enemy on the bench above the river in the 
edge of Reno. A white canvas could be 
seen to fall to the ground down there and 
the men could be seen waving their arms. 
Presently the echo of a tremendous shout- 
ing floated up the ridge. The enemy might 
be organizing a truly desperate chase. 
The stallion whirled and with the mares at 
his heels settled into one of those forty- 
mile dashes that save the flanks of Nevada 
wild mustangs from the branding-iron and 
their mouths from the bitter taste of a 
bridle. 

The men did not pursue. None paid 
much attention to the horses except a 
young multi-millionaire from New York 
who wondered where their riders were, but 
even he forgot the herd rigidly posed on the 
sky-line when the canvas veil dropped from 
the statue of his father, which was indeed 
the work of Gutzon Borglum. The bronze 






was John W. Mackay come to the Com- 
stock again. With the stripping of the 
canvas his face set in an eternal stare 
across the valley to Mt. Davidson from 
beneath the brown crust of which he and 
his companions in their day had extracted 
seven hundred million dollars in gold and 
silver ore. But why should Mackay, who 
knew more about that stupendous dis- 
covery than anybody else, stare? Plainly 
Mt. Davidson did not contain the answer. 
The figure of John W. Mackay, brought 
suddenly into the sunlight of the Univer- 
sity of Nevada quadrangle, was beholding 
Reno, a city of twelve thousand popula- 
tion, at his feet, and stretching away to the 
foot of the Washoe range the meadows, 
orchards and farms which the university 
had helped bring into existence to replace 
the lizard-hiding sage-brush he had sup- 
posed to be the mask upon an everlasting 
waste. No wonder John W. Mackay 
leaned on the pick in his left hand, forgot 
the nugget in his right hand, and stared. 
The bronze eyes swept the Geiger grade, 
up which a multitude toiled to Virginia 
City and down which Hank Monk drove 
Horace Greeley at breakneck speed to 
keep the lecture appointment at Placer- 
ville, but his attention must have been 
instantly diverted by the whistling of loco- 
motives on three separate railroads that 
entered Reno. One of the whistling trains 
was just setting out for New York with 
thirty carloads of Nevada alfalfa to be 
used in putting race-winning energy into 


the thoroughbreds -of the stable of James 
R. Keene. Another train had brought in 
for shipment to San Francisco fat steers 
which not the native bunch-grass, but this 
same wonderful forage alfalfa, had run up 
to five dollars over the market. The 
third train,,drawn by a huge Mallet loco- 
motive completely made over at the shops 
at Sparks, just up the track there, had a 
mixed lading of sugar from the beet-han- 
dling factory at Fallon, copper matte from 
the smelter near Ely, gypsum, cement and 
wool from the backs 
of Shropshires lately 
introduced from the 
other side of the 
world. Yet not even 
the whistling of such 
trains might long 
hold the bronze ears 
against the sounds 
that came from im- 
mediately behind. 
Ore was. sere 
Crushed in ative 
Mackay School of 
Nines sue @ ore 
would be analyzed 
and assayed with the 
same scientific exact- 
ness that marked the 
work in the mechan- 
ical arts and elec- 
trical buildings at 
the east side of the 
quadrangle, and the 
work in the soil, seed, 
chemical and home 
economics laborato- 
ries at the west side. 

“Mr. Mackay has 
a startled look on his 
face’ observed one oi the spectators. 
“Perhaps that roving band of wild horses 
up at the summit just now was something 
he didn’t expect to find here at this late 
day.” 

“IT should say,” replied a New York 
editor who was present, “‘that it is the evi- 
dences of the tame rather than the evi- 
dences of the wild that startle Mr. Mackay. 
With the proven possibilities in sight from 
this spot at this moment, it is probably 
inconceivable to a man of his shrewdness 
why half the population of the United 
States hasn’t come tumbling into 
Nevada.” 





Clarence Hungerford Mackay, son of John W. Mackay 
of the Comstock, and benefactor of 
the University of Nevada 


The story of modern Nevada embraces 
the story of a university and its work. If 
that bronze figure at the head of the campus 
quadrangle lost its name-plate it might 
immediately be mistaken for the symbol 
of the institution whose buildings surround 
it. Intelligence booted and belted with its 
instrument in its hand—that’s the Uni- 
versity of Nevada. The pick would stand 
for scientific exactness. It is doubtful 
whether a university anywhere else, while 
not neglecting the cultural arts, has reached 
a guiding hand so 
deeply into the prac- 
tical destinies of the 
state. Nevada had 
problems commensu- 
rate with its physical 
bigness, and the Uni- 
versity of Nevada 
projected itself into 
the problems so 
consistently that it 
became one of the 
most familiar factors 
in thesolution. Thus 
the story of the state 
and the story of the 
university are inter- 
woven. In the pres- 
ent consideration of 
some phases of the 
most interesting re- 
gion on the North 
American continent 
the vein of interest 
will sometimes wind 
about the campus, 
but as often it will 
lead off into the 
parts of the desert 
where man - tracks 
and wheel-tracks are dimmest. 

The desert, by the way, has lost the brace 
of adjectives that thrilled the class in geog- 
raphy half a generation ago. The Great 
American Desert—which came finally to 
mean Nevada more than anything else— 
has been sponged off the map of these 
United States. Water and gasoline did it. 
Scientific exactness was the directing force. 
Mr. Greeley put a good deal of the awe into 
the awful Great American Desert. Hank 
Monk gave him a runaway ride around the 
precipices in 1859 and he remembered it 
vividly whenever he took up his pen to 
write a few reminiscent columns for the 


New York Tribune. Awful, with that 
stage ride left out, meant nothing worse 
than dryness and remoteness. Water and 
gasoline are getting closer day by day to 
the total elimination of these qualities. 
Dryness was the bar to productivity of the 
soil. The Government’s twelve-million- 
dollar Truckee-Carson project was planned 
to provide irrigated farms for ten thousand 
farmers and to show a hundred thousand 
other farmers what could be accomplished 
by conserving 
the waters of 
rivers that ran a 
while and then 
disappeared into 
the ground. It 
was necessary 
for the Govern- 
ment to lead off, 
but not neces- 
sary for the 
Government to 
do all that is to 
be done. The 
Carey Act pro- 
vides the way 
for private en- 
terprise to step 
in in Nevada, 
just as it has 
done in seven 
or eight other 
Western states, 
and become the 
savior of the 
people at a first- 
class profit to 
itself. In fact, 
the Carey Act is 
enabling water 
to flow toward 
a quarter of a million promising acres. In 
the matter of the land above the ditch the 
University has shown that where the rain- 
fall is as much as twelve inches in a year, 
dry-farming may be relied upon to produce 
a full stand of glutinous grain. 

The automobile has proved itself the 
gasoline camel that could eat up the dis- 
tance between desert waterholes. Recently 
the legislature at Carson City nullified a 
statute of 1875 that forbade citizens to 
allow camels and dromedaries to run at 
large. It was after the Comstock Lode 
had been discovered in 1859 and men all 
over the world were asking what was the 





Dr. Joseph Edward Stubbs, President of the University of 
Nevada and a guiding force in the destinies of the state 


quickest way to get to Virginia City that 
Congress undertook to conquer the desert 
with camels from the Sahara. The Civil 
War brought sudden end to the benevolent 
experiment, even though it was the Com- 
stock’s gold and silver flood that kept the 
bark of national credit afloat in those 
troublous times. When, in 1901, news of a 
fabulous metal strike in Nevada again 


‘quickened the pulse of the whole world, 


the gasoline camel had come into common 
use and the 
waterless roads 
were instantly 
stripped of their 
ancient terror 
and fatigue. 
The automobile 
brought the new 
mining camp in 
the farthest can- 
yon within a 
day’s travel of 
the railroad; it 
whisked the sick 
to the hospital; 
it ran with food 
to the hungry. 
The auto be- 
came a develop- 
ment factor not 
second even to 
irrigation. It 
drove danger 
clean out of the 
desert. Today 
it is the burro 
of the prospec- 
tor, the freight 
schooner of the 
mine operator, 
the wain of the 
farmer, the bronco. of the cow-man save 
only when he has roping to do. It is 
the vital spark carrying life to the utter 
corners of the sage. What spot can remain 
lonely or impossible when it is but hours 
distant from a candy store, a doctor, a 
church, or a motion-picture theater where 
are shown the zippingest frcnuer dramas 
fresh from the film factories of Chicago? 
Yet the ditch and the devil-wagon have 
not slashed out that absorbing interest 
that the primitive holds for every red- 
blooded human. The picturesque has been 
made accessible; it has not been destroyed. 
The Governor of Nevada, for instance, 


still refrains from wearing suspenders, 
although it is a genteel russet belt that 
makes possible the freedom of shoulder a 
job like his demands. There is not the 
slightest doubt that the ditch and the devil- 
wagon have transformed Nevada, while 
the country was asleep to what was going 
on, into an accessible region fuller than 
Wall street of business possibilities, fuller 
than a rubber factory of the expansion 
American young men crave, and fuller 
than the Arctic Circle of North Poles eager 
to be discovered. The people of the United 
States haven’t got around to the news yet. 
The people of Nevada have not waited for 
strangers to tell them. They have seen, 
and they have tackled  surface-cruised 
possibilities with all the strength of their 
limited numbers. They needed, as few 
people have ever needed, to be saved from 
countless errors of experimentation that 
would entail loss of money and loss of time. 
Their attack upon the new ground needed 
a definite guiding hand. Scientific exact- 
ness was indispensable. And this is where 
the educational institution on the bench 
above the Truckee at Reno—this Univer- 
sity that has more functions than a uni- 
versity—comes into consideration. 

Dr. Joseph Edward Stubbs was a mili- 
tant Ohio parson who believed that the 
world could be educated out of its mis- 
takes. Having a booted and belted spirit 
within him, he agreed to resign the presi- 
dency of the Baldwin University of Ohio 
for the presidency of the University of 
Nevada in 1894 when he discovered that 
he was being asked to undertake the higher 
education of young men and young women 
who had about them a singular roominess 
for the exercise of every good thing they 
could learn. At that time Nevada’s tax- 
able property amounted to only twenty- 
three millions—today it reaches one hun- 
dred and fifteen millions—and the Univer- 
sity, with a course of study slightly in ad- 
vance of a good high school, had an enroll- 
ment of two hundred students. There 
were but four buildings. The school cen- 
tered about its college of mining. Presi- 
dent Stubbs’ first observation was that the 
expense of attendance was too great. 
Many of the students came from a distance. 
The Southern Pacific Company was _ in- 
duced to grant half-fare rates to all students, 
a concession that has never been rescinded. 
Next he secured from the legislature an 


appropriation of $38,000 with which Lin- 
coln Hall, a dormitory for boys, and Man- 
zanita Hall, a dormitory for girls, and a 
dining-hall were erected. During the twen- 
ty years of his régime Dr. Stubbs’ policy 
has been always to give the best instruc- 
tion at the lowest cost. Today a student 
may live at this University, that has long 
since become standard in its curriculum 
and teaching force, on $200 a year, and live 
well on $250, which figures are approxi- 
mated perhaps at few other universities 
in the country. The Southern Pacific has 
always transported the University’s fre- 
quent educational exhibits to any pom 
desired without cost. 

Funds were necessary to the Heelan 
ment of the course of study and the teach- 
ing force. The state was poor. National 
aid was secured. The University now has 
$100,000 a year raised by an eight-cent 
state tax, and from the national Govern- 
ment the $15,000 Hatch fund and the 
$15,000 Adams fund for demonstration and 
research at the agricultural experiment 
station, and the $50,000 Morrill fund ap- 
portioned to the colleges of agriculture and 
engineering; and the $6000 fund for the 
support of teaching in the Mackay School 
of Mines, derived from the $150,000 Mackay 
Endowment. 

The Mackay benefactions, which now 
amount to $400,000, witness to the re- 
sourcefulness of a president ambitious 
beyond the financial sinews provided him. 
From the windows of his office Dr. Stubbs 
looked out upon the Washoe range and Mt. 
Davidson. One day the thought came: 
why not appeal to the families of the men 
whom the Comstock made rich? He wrote 
to the widow and son of John W. Mackay, 
whose ninety-miliion-dollar estate had been 
probated in Nevada after Mackay’s death 
in London in 1902 for the reason that the 
elder Mackays had never relinquished 
Virginia City as their legal place of resi- 
dence. While these letters awaited con- 
sideration something happened. There was 
need of an appropriate site in Nevada for 
a bronze statue which Clarence H. Mackay ~ 
had commissioned Gutzon Borglum to 
make of his father. Dr. Stubbs offered by 
telegraph to place the statue at the head of 
the quadrangle about which the Univer- 
sity buildings were grouped. Clarence 
Mackay and his mother, Mrs. Marie Louise 
Mackay, accepted the site and at the same 


Me 


Old Con. California, from the dumps at Virginia City. 
thought that the bottom had been reached by Mackay and Fair, the partners 
cut suddenly into the bonanza which paid one hundred millions to the 


stockholders in the next five years. 


ax 


In 1874, when it was 


Seven hundred millions, in gold and 


silver, have come out of the shadow of Mt. Davidson. Some of these mines, 
famous through half a century, are still producing 


time expressed their willingness to erect a 
needed building for the college of mining. 
Stanford White of New York drew the 
plans for a structure to cost, with its equip- 
ment, $110,000. The Mackay School of 
Mines now occupies its spacious two-story 
home of Harvard brick in colonial style 
of architecture. Other universities have 
patterned buildings after this one on ac- 
count of its beauty and simplicity. For 
four years Mrs. Mackay and her son gave 
$6000 a year for teaching purposes in the 
mining school, and now they have provided 
this amount permanently with an endow- 
ment of $150,000. 

Clarence H. Mackay’s interest was 
aroused. An athletic field was needed. 
Mackay purchased land and provided one 
of the best college athletic fields to be 
found. He added picturesque training 
quarters and a grand-stand at a cost of 
$30,000. At his expense the quadrangle 
and athletic field were sodded. The campus 
is to be given a new and dignified entrance 
from Lake street. The Mackay donations 
have reached $400,000, and there may be 
much more to come, since Clarence Mackay 
has had plans made for a comprehensive 





grouping of a dozen splendid new build- 
ings about the quadrangle. The general 
scheme is adapted from that of the Uni- 
versity of Virginia. Perhaps Mr. Mackay 
hopes to interest others of the heirs to the 
Comstock fortunes in assisting him to 
bring the proposed new structures into 
existence. 

The Mackay School of Mines would be 
of interest if only because it preserves the 
traditions of mineral discoveries that elec- 
trified the world. Of much more impor- 
tance is the fact that it is training with scien- 
tific exactness young men who may go 
into the still unexplored Nevada hills and 
make new mineral discoveries as impor- 
tant as those that have put the spice into 
history. Theory and practice are as closely 
wedded in this school as eggs and sugar in 
a custard. It would seem that the prac- 
tical must always predominate in any class- 
room exposition of mining here in the very 
shadow of Mt. Davidson with its record of 
seven hundred millions production. Today 
Ophir, Con. Virginia, Mexican—a few of 
those famous through half a century—are 
still producing. The little armies of men 
still go down in the “‘bucket” to the face of 


drifts three thousand feet below the sur- 
face. According to the signs in Con 
Ahern’s famous old Crystal saloon at Vir- 
ginia City, the Comstock has produced 
four hundred millions in silver and three 
hundred millions in gold from ten million 
tons of ore taken out of six hundred miles 
of tunnels, shafts, inclines, drifts, raises, 
winzes and stopes. Con Ahern came to 
the camp soon after roistering Jim Finney, 
known as Old Virginia, John Bishop, Aleck 
Henderson and Jack Young had followed 
rich float up Gold Canyon just as Peter 
O’Riley, Patrick McLaughlin and Henry 
Thomas Paige Comstock, known as Old 
Pancake, had followed it up Six-Mile Canyon, 
and opened the two ends of the Comstock 
Lode in 1859. Ahern is a living witness to 
what happened when the cry of “On to 
Washoe!”’ went round the world just ten 
years after the great gold rush to Cali- 
fornia. It was California indeed that sup- 
plied the earliest rushers to the Comstock. 
The winter of ’59 saw San Francisco de- 
serted by nearly every man who could pay 
for steamer passage to Sacramento, whence 
he traveled over the snow-buried Sierra by 
whatever method he could afford. When 
the Central Pacific engineers investigated 
the mountain travel situation in 1863 pre- 
paratory to setting stakes for the railroad, 
they found a magnificent toll-road reaching 
from Placerville to Virginia City. The one 
hundred miles of turnpike had been built 
at a cost of $500,000 and was being kept 
free of snow in winter and of dust in summer 
at a cost of $50,000 a mile. The stage 
coaches were almost without number. 
Four thousand men and twenty thousand 
horses lifted one hundred and fifty million 
pounds of freight over the Sierra to Vir- 
ginia City in a year at six cents a pound. 

Con Ahern can tell you of the “hard 
blue stuff”? that the discoverers cursed and 
threw out of their way, the same being the 
richest silver ore ever found; of how each 
of the discoverers sold out for a pittance 
and each came to an unhappy end, Old 
Virginia being thrown from his horse, 
while on a spree, and killed; Old Pancake 
Comstock committing suicide after fail- 
ing to recoup; McLaughlin dying a pauper 
and being buried at the public expense; 
O’Riley losing everything in stock specula- 
tion and ending his days in an asylum for 
the insane. Several men remain in Vir- 
ginia City who knew John W. Mackay 


when he came in from California after the 
first excitement was over. They knew 
him when he lost his savings mining the 
Union ground, and when he worked as a 
timberman in the Mexican at $4 a day. 
They knew James G. Fair from his arrival, 
saw Mackay and Fair come together, each 
being attracted by the other’s mining 
knowledge and keen business intelligence. 
These old witnesses really didn’t expect 
much when Mackay and Fair interested 
James C. Flood and William S. O’Brien 
in their operations and began in a quiet 
way to buck William C. Sharon and the 
Bank of California crowd. These same wit- 
nesses thought Mackay and Fair had 
reached the bottom of Con. Virginia and 
California in 1874, when suddenly the 
partners cut into the bonanza that paid 
one hundred million dollars to the stock- 
holders in the next five years. “I remem- 
ber the day the dividends passed the hun- 
dred millions” says one old miner. “I was 
just on my way down to spend an after- 
noon with Alvah Gould. You know Alvah 
sold his half of Gould & Curry in the first 
days for $450, and I was going down to see 
him in Reno where he was running a peanut 
stand.” 

The old ones remember too when the 
“crazy little German Jew engineer” came 
to town and swore he was going to drive 
a six-mile tunnel to drain the Lode of water 
and ore.. In the size of the accomplishment 
and in the matter of obstacles overcome, 
the driving of the Sutro Tunnel by Adolph 
Sutro is comparable only to the laying of 
the Atlantic cable by Cyrus W. Field. 

Virginia City is said to have seen the 
day when it put fifty thousand people to 
bed at night. Some of these occupied glit- 
tering suites in the International, which 
stands today as grimly if not as proudly 
as in the days when it was the most awe- 
inspiring hotel west of Chicago. The orig- 
inal Wells Fargo & Co. Express. building 
sags as though it were worn out with try- 
ing to keep account of the tons of dust and 
bullion that came and went over its coun- 
ters. The old Stock Exchange building 
has not lost its dignity altogether. Vacant 
iron-shuttered brick stores tell of a precau- 
tion which, in thwarting fire and robbers, 
thwarted also the fingers of time. Virginia. 
City is a reservoir of mellowed romance. 
It is a monument recalling something 
which, in this unaccountable Nevada, is as 


In May, 1900, legend says, Jim Butler shied a stone at his errant burro and 


discovered the ledge at Tonopah. 


¢ Since then the camp has produced fifty 
millions, with silver at half what it brought in the Comstock days. 


Nevada 


has witnessed perhaps the most tremendous excitement attendant upon min 
ing discoveries since men agreed which metals should constitute their money 





likely to occur again. Nature had been 
wonderfully kind, but after all it took 
giants to make the Comstock. And the race 
of giants is not extinct. 

Among men of gigantic proportions in 
the present decade have been George S. 
Nixon and George Wingfield, whose rise 
began in earnest with the sensational min- 
eral discoveries that extended from Tono- 
pah to other points in southern Nevada. 
Goldfield became their own. During a 
reckless and frenzied period in which for- 
tunes were made and lost as in Comstock 
days, Nixon and Wingfield were the sub- 
stantial and steadying influence. It was 
the ground, not the public, that they mined. 

Tonopah has produced fifty millions, with 
silver worth half what it brought in Com- 
stock days; and Goldfield has produced 
seventy-five millions. Both are still produc- 
ing. Nevada has witnessed perhaps the 
most tremendous excitement attendant 
upon mining discoveries that has occurred 
since men agreed which metals should 
constitute their money. A strike made at 
Eureka, Nye county, in 1864 was so over- 
shadowed by the activity at Virginia City 
that it was little heard of by the country, 


and yet during the following twenty years 
the Eureka mines produced sixty millions. 

At Ely a mountain of two-and-a-half per 
cent copper ore is being mined with powder 
and steam shovels, the ore being hauled by 
train twenty miles to Steptoe valley. They 
had to go twenty miles to find a place 
barren enough for a smelter. In carrying 
on this open-cut mining more earth has 
been moved than was displaced in excavat- 
ing the Panama Canal. The difference 
between the two big jobs is that nobody 
has had anything to say of the one in Ne- 
vada. In fact it has been Nevada’s mis- 
fortune that its bad side and not its good 
side has usually got into the world’s con- 
versation. Most of the talk has been oc- 
casioned by strangers who came only to 
engage in questionable exploitation and by 
the unhappily married who perverted the 
pure motive of a residence law enacted at 
the suggestion of President Lincoln until 
the outraged people have had to change 
their law. 

The discoverers of the Comstock threw 
away the “hard blue stuff’ that contained 
the richest values. Even careful Mackay 
and his fellows—processes not being then 


what they are now—left so much of value 
in their tailings that the Virginia City 
roadway is today lined with cyanide plants 
working out the stuff they discarded as 
worthless. The dumps at Eureka are to 
be reworked for the values that have lain 
neglected for many years. Ten million 
dollars was spent in running tunnels around 
Mt. Davidson that did not develop a single 
paying mine. Do you begin to see where 
the University’s Mackay School of Mines 
with its methods and doctrines of scientific 
exactness comes into the quarter-solved 
problem of Nevada’s mines? It will assay 
any citizen’s samples free of charge and tell 
him what to do. While specializing cer- 
tain young men in how to go with the 
smallest error to the yet unopened deposits 
of gold, copper and silver, it is as carefully 
training others who will grapple the desert 
for its slate, iron, cinnabar, gypsum, borax 
and salt. In addition to the young men it 
has sent into the mineral belt of their own 
state, the University has graduates who 
are doing notable work in the mines of 
Alaska, South America, Africa, Java and 
the Philippines. Four graduates are in an 
Ecuador mine that produced a fortune last 
year. Most of these fellows are making 
names for themselves. They feel that they 
must do well, for they are aware that any 
day may bring news of the discovery of 
virgin mining fields in Nevada that will 
make them sorry they left home. 
Adjoining the sixty-acre campus on the 
east is the sixty-acre farm of the experi- 
ment station. The farm is outside the 
range of vision of the statue at the head of 
the quadrangle, or John W. Mackay’s 
bronze stare would deepen at the sight of 
products he never supposed could flourish 
in the precincts of the sage. The man who 
buys a piece of the newly irrigated land in 
Nevada goes over and puts in some hours 
of some days among the boys who study 
their daily lessons on the University farm, 
and then he goes to break virgin soil and 
put in a virgin crop with scientific exact- 
ness. He doesn’t have to waste five years 
finding out a few fundamental facts for 
himself. The Government has started the 
water onto the land; the University sug- 
gests the crop. At the farm horticulture 
and agronomy receive equal attention. 
Alfalfa is the great staple. Nevada alfalfa 
has startling qualities. James B. Haggin 
shipped thirty-five carloads of it to Ken- 


tucky and New York last fall to feed his 
track horses through the winter. The 
biggest meat concern in California gathered 
cattle from all over six Western states last 
fall and shipped them to Nevada. Thirty- 
five thousand head were fed at Lovelock 
for months on the local alfalfa. An expert 
from the University was employed to weigh 
the cattle and the hay and ascertain the 
exact results of fattening steers in this way. 
Ever since beef began to go up five years 
ago stockmen have been learning that 
winter feeding pays. The home demand for 
alfalfa will increase faster than the farmers 
can supply the hay. The cattlemen would 
like to enlarge their herds. If the Univer- 
sity can find an alfalfa which does not 
require flooding and which can stand a 
degree of cold weather, there is no reason 
why Nevada should not become a second 
Iowa. 

Elko is the banner farming county. The 
Carson valley, with water at hand, will be- 
come an agricultural domain of untold 
possibilities. The agricultural and grazing 
lands of the Southern Pacific are being 
thrown open to the public. The railroad 
is to pay the expenses of a forty-acre farm 
beside its tracks which the University will 
conduct, so that travelers and visitors may 
see at a glance what Nevada irrigated 
lands will produce. Trees and flowers, as 
well as grains and vegetables, will be grown. 
In the eastern part of the state the Univer- 
sity will conduct, under the same condi- 
tions, a sixty-acre dry farm for demon- 
stration purposes. In Elko county record 
crops of Turkey-red wheat, oats and barley 
are being grown above the level of the ditch. 

At the University stock farm, adjoining 
the agricultural experiment station, the 
yards and pens exhibit cattle, sheep and 
hogs that have carried off first prizes at the 
fairs of neighboring states. Here the farm- 
er, as well as the student, learns why the 
Hereford is the best range animal, the 


Shorthorn the best for feeding in confine- 


ment. The demonstrations made with 
Holsteins, Guernseys and Jersey Short- 
horns have had much to do with the milk 
districts going in for strictly dairy strains. 
Larger cows are being raised, the extra 
returns more than offsetting the added 
cost of feeding. 

The stockmen have seen the profits in 
scientific exactness. They have bred up 
their beef herds. The result is an animal 


000‘O¢T$ Jo JUSTIMOpUS UB WIOIS ‘AvYyORA OSINO'T ore yy ‘IoyJOU Sty puw ABYyOV “FY soUsIVIO 





‘slouop ey} Aq 10} peptaoid useq s 
218 BPBADN JO AjISIaATUA, 9Y4 Jo sz 


ay SUIPTINgG sq} Ul Suryovay, “Azrordurrs pue Ajnvaq §}t JO JUN09B UO QUO SITY} 104} SBuIPTInq peuszsyyed sABY SOI}ISIOATUN JOYIQ ‘pednois Suteq 
Urpin Ureur oY} TOIyM Jnoqge ‘ajsuvipenb 94} Jo pvoy oy} ye Youd pavareyT Jo ouroy A1048-0My snoroeds 8 sardno00 seulfy Jo JooyDg Avyovy oy, 





At the University stock-farm, the men of the new Nevada are learning S wliyae 
The stockmen have been taught the profits in scientific exactness. The ranges 


are narrowing through cultivation, but less land and the growing of alfalfa 
and other feed means more money. é The production of meat in Nevada in 
years to come will be limited by nothing except, perhaps, the amount of alfalfa 





The health of the University’s human animal receives as careful consideration as is given its experimental 

stock-farm. When Clarence Mackay’s interest had been aroused, he found that an athletic field was needed 

and he provided one of the best fields to be found at any college. The field was sodded and a grandstand 
and training-quarters added at a cost of $30,000 


Reno, the seat of the University of Nevada, shows the cultural 
influences which have overcome the sage-brush. The bonanza 


kings of Comstock days built their palaces in San Francisco; those 
of today maintain their splendid homes in the Nevada metropolis 





A hundred Horace Greeleys would be bidding for fame as prophets if they stood in the streets of New York 
today and bade young men go west and grow up with Nevada. Dryness and remoteness have been overcome. 
The stage is set for the next great drama in Nevada, a drama of new people and little concerned with mines 





The present buildings of the University of Nevada, viewed across 

an acreage of alfalfa. The sixty-acre farm of the experiment 

station adjoins the sixty-acre campus of the college. The com- 

bination expresses the real meaning of the title of this article— 
‘The University and Diversity of Nevada”’ 





Balad 








The plan now being followed in the building of the new university 





On March 4, 1914, the new library building of the University was dedicated with 


significant ceremonies. This building stands as the center of the cultural work ina 
University which, probably more deeply than any college elsewhere, has reached 
a guiding hand into the practical destinies of the state 








A gateway that is at once the entrance to the University and to the service of Nevada 


promised to be of benefit to the state. 
The young financier loves Nevada. Here 
is one way in which he showed it: the home- 
steaders on the! Government’s newly irri- 
gated lands at Fallon found difficulty in 
making their water payments for the first 
year or two, before their crops were fairly 
started. They needed a source of imme- 
diate return. Wingfield suggested dairying. 
The homesteaders had no milchers. Wing- 
field purchased a $20,000 herd of thorough- 
breds in California and distributed them 
among the new citizens of Fallon. He built 
a creamery and allowed the homesteaders 
to pay for their cows with one-half the 
profits from the milk. 

A hundred Horace Greeleys would be 
bidding for fame as prophets if they stood 
in the streets of New York today and bade 
young men go west and grow up with the 
country—grow up with Nevada. Verily 
it is the land of immediate opportunity, 
of largest promise in every substantial 
reward. Men who may know nothing of 
Nevada today will learn of what it offers 
and will do things there in the next ten or 
twenty years that are reasonably certain 
to win them bronze statues on the Uni- 
versity campus. Opportunity looms so 
large. Dryness and remoteness are ghosts 
that have been laid. Three transconti- 
nental railroads cross the state east and 
west; half a dozen shorter roads extend 
north and south. Nevada has more rail- 
road mileage per capita than any other 
state. The auto eats up the distance be- 
tween ranch-house or mining bungalow 
and the station. The stage is set for the 
next great drama in Nevada—a drama 
involving many new people—and though 
the mining history is but well begun, it 
may have little to do with the mines. Its 
exact nature, its scope and rewards are for 
enterprising Amundsens, Mackays and Bur- 
banks to say. 

No inspired vision is required to see all 
this; a trip to Nevada will reveal it to the 
least prophetic eye. Go to Reno, walk 
over to the gently-rising campus of the 
most practical of universities and from the 
base of the statue behold the things that 
make bronze John W. Mackay stare. The 
Sierra on the west and the Washoe range 
on the south and east frame a prospect 
that must move even a man of wood. There 


is room to work here. Nevada has a 
square mile of territory to each resident. 
The imagination begins to stir with the 
potentialities. Go into the museum of the 
Mackay School of Mines, to the agricul- 
tural station, to the stock farm; see what 
this land yields to the intelligent hand. 
Breathe the dry health-giving thought- 
purifying air and you will begin to under- 
stand about this Land of the Certain Prom- 
ise; you will understand why every man that 
merges his best self into it must become a 
factor; how a man seeking his work in this 
proving ground of the spirit might become 
the accepted instrument of forces of which 
he had only vaguely dreamed. 


In a leather chair in a square stone build- 
ing in Carson City—within a mile of the 
prehistoric footprints—sits a smiling young 
man who seems to be in pretty thorough 
accord with this strange Nevada. His 
name is Oddie. He is the belted Governor 
of the state. 

“Just how did Tonopah begin?” I asked 
him. 

“Jim Butler followed his straying burro 
and found the ledge sticking out of the 
ground” he replied. “I had the ore samples 
assayed. Lacking eight dollars to pay the 
assayer, I gave him a fifth interest. He 
didn’t hang onto it, though; he sold out in 
two weeks for $32,500.” 

“How much were you worth three months 
after the Mizpah began operations?” 

‘“A million dollars.” 

“How much eventually?” 

“Maybe between three and four mil- 
lions.” 

“How much of it have you now?” 

“Whew! Not any of it.” The Governor 
of Nevada smiled the smile of confidence 
and understanding that probably had a lot 
to do with his becoming the Governor, and 
went on: “But I’m at least as happy as 
when I was rich, and what I am financially 
today means nothing at all with reference 
to what I shall be financially tomorrow. 
If I happen to need a lot of money doubtless 
I shall happen to have it.” 

“Why, what do you mean by your last 
statement?” 

“Nevada is kind”? smiled the Governor. 
“T mean merely that I have not the slight- 
est intention of leaving Nevada.” 


I ST o10Y) BULYOIS St If YOIYM JOF JUL[A JuRysTsod [wloods 9y} puy Wea 


WMO] puodsas B 9MODaq JOU P[NOYS VpvAEN AYA UOSBOL OL 
“91B}s SIU} OJUT Podd Lys ood $0}B}S ULo}SeM X{S IOAO [[@ WOIF 9[1}Bd ‘T[ey 


[U OUT JT “BsTVJLB [Bool Vy} WO SYJUOUT 1OF YOO[VAO'T 1B poy a10.M PBI PUBSNOY} OAY-AWIYL “4 
JIpEubD SUIPJLVJS SVY Bs VJ[B VPVAON “AJIOdSOId JO UBII]S SUL[[JOMS-IoAV UB SMO YY O14} ‘BpBAeN MoU 9} JO JapuoM dLUIDS—BI[VJ[V JO UOAUB) PUBLH IU L 


4seT al M Ysn 








Tt V3 


TANIA 


_ 301121 057 














